Is travel sketch a good marriage between sketching and enjoying holiday trip in Spain?

You travel to Spain to sketch. You just want to sketch and go sightseeing, sketch and enjoy eating, sketch and experience cultures.

That's why we carefully choose Barcelona, Valencia and Sevilla - the three most interesting cities in Spain for you to travel sketch because of their unique cityscapes, colour intensity and cultural diversity.

Then you might think the tension that there would not be enough time for sketching because of too much time in travelling from point A to point B.

On the other hand, you might feel overwhelmed or tired after one-and-half-hour concentration on sketching. You need to do something pleasantly different from sketching itself or sketching the same subject.

So it's not about the time, it's about the right balance of learning sketch lessons, completing your sketching and colouring on location, and various travelling experiences that inspire you sketch better with more confidence and joy.

Vivienne Lingard, an experienced sketcher, illustrator, art teacher and curator, shows in her travel sketch blog how she confronted the most common travel sketching challenges and captured them in her sketchbook, with a group of kiwi sketchers in the Travel Sketch Spain Holiday Tour in April 2019, organised by 2WAYS Tours in partnership with ErinHill Sketching New Zealand.

It was a peaceful 3hr train ride from Barcelona to Valencia, which gave me time to sketch the orange tree (above), abundant with Valencia oranges – naturally. I looked about the carriage, and saw most of the group head-down sketching, or colouring their work, assiduously.

Torres de Serranos – our first sketching destination. Except, when I faced the large stone edifice, as wonderful as it was, I felt the familiar ‘I don’t feel like drawing you’ feeling overcome me, and sketched a street corner behind it, as the scene appealed more.

The next day we climbed aboard the taxi-bus for the Ciudad de las Artes y las Ciencias (City of Arts and Science complex). Boy oh boy! This was the most amazing set of buildings. Curves overlapping more curves; arcs, arches and connecting bridges, mirrored in vast pools of still water. I secured a nice spot in the sun, took out my sketchbook, took hold of my pen and started. I did a couple of ‘thumbnail’ sketches first, looking and looking, measuring with my eyes before tackling a larger view.

And, as if we hadn’t enjoyed enough fantastic food in Valencia, the next day Amelia and Ellen took us to a stupendous paella lunch at La Albufera, a large wetlands and lake area. A couple of hours later, we were beside the lake climbing into a Vela Latina, a traditional boat. What a pleasant excursion. The group are opening books and sketching but I continue to dream my own story.